Standardized Testing

When I think about standards and standardized testing, I immediately cringe because these were things that haunted me throughout my public school experience. It started with the NECAPs in elementary school which was just plain awful for second grade Allie because I couldn’t sit still for the life of me. My teacher told us the test was very important and to do our best but I had never taken anything like it before. I remember feeling like a fish out of water. I had to take the NECAPs again in fifth and eight grade. I remember feeling so lucky all the years in-between because I hated the testing so much. I hated being stuck in one room, forced to sit in silence, not allowed to go to the bathroom, or even read a book when I finished. It felt like torture. It was especially bad when I got to high school because as a junior, we had to take the NECAP but it became a graduation requirement – if you didn’t pass you didn’t graduate. I failed the math portion my junior year and had to retake it senior year. I was seriously at stake of not graduating high school. This was insane to me because I had passing grades in all of my classes – I had an A in math class! I remember questioning what value this test was going to have once I graduated and how it could possibly be measuring my academic intelligence if I was failing to meet the standard on the test, but passing my class with flying colors.

This continued to haunt me junior year when we had to pilot the PARK test (which honestly, I filled in a bunch of random bubbles as fast as I could and put my head down for the read of the time we had to be in the room) and the SAT. I don’t think that the policymakers and the people who create these tests understand the toll it takes on students to have to sit in a room for hours on end and fry their brains with material that isn’t even relevant to what they’re learning in their actual classes. All of my teachers ended up “teaching to the test.” About a week before, we would get “review” material for the tests so that we could pass, and it completely was derailed from everything we were already doing – basically the instruction had to be interrupted just so that teachers could attempt to help. They didn’t have to do that, but they knew that there were students who would struggle to pass and didn’t want that. It was like they knew too that these tests were meaningless in determining our intellectual worth. 

As a high school student, I still struggled with standardized tests. In order to gain admission to the School of Education, I had to retake the SAT that I didn’t pass my junior year of high school. As a college educated individual with an associate’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in the works, I miserably failed the math portion of a high school standardized test. I decided to switch to the ACT, and miserable failed. Again. Sitting in a room full of teenagers getting ready to go off to college, I realized how stressed they were. One girl cried during break even. I also remember going over the material and thinking that majority of the information on this test was useless to me. I had to take the ACT again and passed by a stroke of luck because I had to guess on most of the math questions. This doesn’t mean I can’t do math. It just means that I struggle to complete 60 advanced math questions in 60 minutes under the pressure of knowing my future rides on the results of a test. 

According to Au’s article, students have been feeling this pressure for over a century. Standardized tests were originally created to assert white dominance over communities of color, immigrants, and the poor (Au 244). The concept of standardized tests has not evolved over time so why is it that the American school system still requires these tests? While I don’t come from a colored community or immigrant family, my family suffered a lot financially. Majority of the students who had to retake that NECAP test with me senior year were Black, Hispanic, and/or lower-class. From the second grade, these tests have been determining our academic worth. And as Au points out, it’s the teachers and the school community who face the consequences of students not passing. The whole concept to me is crap. It’s crap because a standardized test does NOT measure anything other than how unfair it is to students who come from different backgrounds other than rich and white. It gives the people who pass a sense of superiority among their peers who don’t. I have to admit, I felt beyond stupid majority of the time when being forced into these tests and most of the people I took them with felt the same way. The solution Au offers with restorative and transformative assessment address essential questions  to try and actuallyaddress an achievement gap and restore justice into education.

Overall, standards and standardized testing are subjects I feel very strongly about due to my own experiences as a student and how I hope to shape my future student’s experiences as a teacher. Au’s piece was really enlightening to me because he says that Racial Justice is Not a Choice, but standardized tests are actively making the choice to ignore racial justice and commit racial injustice.